Urban Colossus: Why Is New York America s Largest City?

Transcription

1 Edward L. Glaeser Urban Colossus: Why Is New York America s Largest City? F 1. Introduction or 200 years, New York City has been the largest city in the nation, and it continues to outperform most cities that were once its competitors. In the 1990s, the city s population grew by 9 percent and finally passed the eight-million mark. New York is the only one of the sixteen largest cities in the northeastern or midwestern United States with a larger population today than it had fifty years ago. Its economy remains robust. Payroll per employee is more than $80,000 per year in Manhattan s largest industry and almost $200,000 per year in its second-largest industry. All cities, even New York, go through periods of crisis and seeming rebirth, and New York certainly went through a real crisis in the 1970s. However, while the dark periods for Boston, Chicago, or Washington, D.C., lasted for thirty or fifty years, New York s worst period lasted for less than a decade. While Boston s history is one of ongoing crises and reinvention (Glaeser 2005), New York s is one of almost unbroken triumph. The remarkable thing about New York is its ability to thrive despite the massive technological changes that challenged every other dense city built around public transportation. What explains New York s ongoing ability to dominate America s urban landscape? In this paper, we explore the economic history of the city and argue that three themes emerge. First, New York s emergence as the nation s premier port was not the result of happenstance followed by lemminglike agglomeration. While there are limits to geographic determinism, the clear superiority of New York s port in terms of its initial depth, the Hudson River and its location, and the other advantages provided by the water-borne connection to the Great Lakes ensured that this port would be America s port. In this case, geography really was destiny, and the significance of trade and immigration to the early republic ensured that New York would dominate. The second theme to emerge from New York s history is the importance of simple transportation cost and scale economies. The rise of the city s three great manufacturing industries in the nineteenth century sugar refining, publishing, and the garment trade depended on New York s place at the center of a transport hub. In all three industries, manufacturing transformed products from outside the United States into finished goods to be sold within the country. Because New York was a hub and products were dispersed throughout the country and the world after entry into that hub, it made perfect sense to perform the manufacturing in the city. The tendency of people to attract more people is the central idea of urban economics, and nowhere is that idea more obvious than in America s largest city. New York s initial advantage as a port then attracted manufacturing and services to cater to the mercantile firms and to take advantage of their low shipping costs. The traditional model of this phenomenon (Krugman 1991) emphasizes that scale matters because it Edward L. Glaeser is a professor of economics at Harvard University and director of Harvard s A. Alfred Taubman Center for State and Local Government. The author thanks the Taubman Center for State and Local Government. Joshua Samuelson provided excellent research assistance. Stanley Engerman provided guidance on sugar. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System. FRBNY Economic Policy Review / December

2 allows manufacturers to save on the costs of supplying goods to residents of the city. But the history of New York suggests that this phenomenon was less important than the advantage of producing in a central location for export elsewhere. Obviously, scale economies were also important; otherwise, there would be no incentive to centralize manufacturing. New York s growth in the early nineteenth century was driven by the rise of manufacturing in the city, which itself depended on New York s primacy as a port. New York s growth in the late nineteenth century owed at least as much to its role as the entryway for immigrants into the United States. Indeed, the basic industrial structure of New York remained remarkably consistent between 1860 and 1910 while the scale increased enormously. Immigrants stayed in New York in port for consumption reasons. Ethnic neighborhoods made the transition to the New World easier, and New York as a city acquired over time a remarkable capacity to cater to immigrant needs. However, immigrants also stayed because the traditional New York industries, especially the garment trade, were able to increase in scale to accommodate extra labor without a huge drop in wages. In the mid-twentieth century, a large number of technological changes challenged cities throughout the United States. Declining transport costs reduced the advantages of access to waterways. The air conditioner helped move citizens west and south. The automobile and the truck enabled the population to disperse from city centers to outlying areas. Almost all of America s biggest cities declined sometimes precipitously over the past fifty years in response to the shock. Eight of the ten largest U.S. cities in 1930 have a smaller population today than they did then (Table 1). New York and Los Angeles are the exceptions. New York s remarkable survival is a result of its dominance in the fields of finance, business services, and corporate management. Forty years ago, Chinitz (1961) described New York as a model of diversity in comparison with industrial Pittsburgh. New York in 2005 does not look nearly as diverse. Today, 28 percent of Manhattan s payroll goes to workers in a single three-digit industry; 56 percent goes to workers in four three-digit industries. New York s twentieth-century success primarily reflects an ability to attract and retain a single industry, and the city s future appears to be linked to a continuing ability to hold that industry. The attraction of finance and business services to New York reflects the city s advantages in facilitating face-to-face contact and the spread of information. Transportation costs for goods have declined by 95 percent over the twentieth century (Glaeser and Kohlhase 2004), but there has been no comparable reduction in the cost of moving people. After all, the primary cost involved in the movement of people is the opportunity cost of time, which rises with wages. For this reason, cities, which represent the elimination of physical distance between people, still excel in delivering services. In addition, as the demand for timely information rises, the proximity that facilitates the flow of that information continues to be critical. The success of finance and business services on the island of Manhattan hinges critically on the advantage that the island has in bringing people together and speeding the flow of knowledge. Table 1 Growth in Top Ten U.S. Cities by 1930 Population City Percentage Growth in Population Population in Population in 2000 New York 6,930, ,008,278 Chicago 3,376, ,896,016 Philadelphia 1,950, ,517,550 Detroit 1,568, ,270 Los Angeles 1,238, ,694,820 Cleveland 900, ,403 St. Louis 821, ,189 Baltimore 804, ,154 Boston 781, ,141 Pittsburgh 669, ,563 United States 151,325, ,421,906 Source: U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Census of Population. 8 Urban Colossus

3 These advantages are the result of scale and density, which themselves result from New York s unique history. The vast number of people crammed together on a narrow island is what makes Manhattan an information hub. The flow of ideas has been exacerbated by the tendency of highly skilled people and industries to locate in the city, which is natural, given that density and idea flows appear to complement one another. The most visible result of New York s strength as a conduit for information is its penchant for information-intensive industries, such as finance or publishing, to locate in the city. While New York s ability to weather past challenges has been remarkable, we cannot be certain that its future success is assured. New York s importance as a port is long past. The declining transport costs of moving goods indicate that the scale advantages remain important only in services. Even in this area, technological changes may reduce New York s transportation cost advantages. In the long run, New York City s success depends on its advantage in transmitting knowledge quickly. This advantage may also be eroded by changes in information technology; however, in the short run, information technology may increase the value of face-to-face interaction and make New York stronger, not weaker (Gaspar and Glaeser 1998). 2. The Early City: The traditional story of New York s origin is that in 1626, the island of Manhattan was bought by Peter Minuit from the Lenapes for sixty guilders worth of trade goods (Burrows and Wallace 1999, p. 23). New Amsterdam was founded by the Dutch West India Company as a trading post oriented toward the lucrative fur trade. As Burrows and Wallace (p. 23) explain, the fur trade involved two exchanges: In the first, European traders and coastal Algonkians exchanged manufactured goods for wampum; in the second, European traders used wampum (and manufactured goods) to obtain first at Fort Orange [Albany]. Manhattan s location a deep-water port at the heart of the Hudson made it an ideal center for commerce, connecting Europeans, coastal native Americans who dealt in wampum, and upriver native Americans who had access to furs. Manufacturing had a place in New York from its inception. An essential part of trade with the natives was the production of manufactured goods, and these were cheaper to make in New Amsterdam than to import from the Netherlands. Agglomeration in a city was natural because of the gains from centralized commerce and because there was substantial risk from ongoing battles with natives. A significant advantage of Lower Manhattan was that it was easier to defend because it was surrounded on three sides by water. The Dutch colonies of New Netherlands were not solely furtrading outposts. Land was abundant, and a steady stream of settlers acquired land (sometimes vast tracts of it such as Rensselaerswyck) and began making basic agricultural products like bread, corn, and meat. The density of settlers was much lower than it was in Massachusetts, but gradually the New Amsterdam area also developed an agricultural hinterland that could both feed the traders and seamen in the city and begin to export basic foodstuffs to more colonies that exported cash crops. In 1664, the town was conquered by the English and renamed New York. The city was conquered, but the English were able to keep the city only by giving the Dutch West India Company the more lucrative colony of Surinam. The integration of New York with the English colonies increased the potential for trading opportunities, and the population of the city surged to approximately 3,000 in 1680 (Burrows and Wallace 1999) and 5,000 in 1698 (Kantrowitz 1995). While many Dutch merchants continued to trade with the Netherlands and the Dutch colonies, a growing group of English merchants and laborers came to the city as well. During this period, New York s trade became primarily oriented toward the West Indies. The primary exports of the port were bread and flour, made from wheat grown in the farms of New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. This model of selling foodstuffs to the colonies, which had cash crops that could be sold back in Europe, had been pioneered by Bostonians in the late 1630s, but New Yorkers (and Philadelphians) had several significant advantages over the Boston merchants. The land in New York and Pennsylvania was better than the land in Massachusetts. The Hudson and Delaware rivers were longer, bigger rivers than the Charles. Indeed, the one long river in New England, the Connecticut, suffered from heavy silt that formed a sandbar near its mouth. New York s Dutch heritage gave it an advantage over Philadelphia in dealing with the Dutch colonies in the Caribbean. New York also offered one more striking advantage over Boston: its ethnic heterogeneity and religious tolerance. Boston s Puritan heritage carried both advantages and disadvantages. The strong religious community invested in education and generally proved able to organize the city and provide basic public goods. Quaker Philadelphia may have been more tolerant than Puritan Boston, but it was still fundamentally a faith-based colony. In contrast, New York was irreligious from the start, and there were fewer barriers against Jewish or Catholic immigrants. Commercial interests ensured that New York City was unusually tolerant relative to other FRBNY Economic Policy Review / December

4 colonies and relative to England itself. New York s place as a haven for America s ethnically heterogeneous immigrants made the city a magnet for immigrants from its earliest years. Despite these advantages, the growth of New York during its first 130 years was relatively modest. Generally, New York was America s third or fourth busiest port. In tonnage, it lagged behind Boston and Charleston in the early eighteenth century and behind Boston and Philadelphia in the late colonial period. Boston had a stronger maritime tradition; Philadelphia had a more developed hinterland. As of 1753, Manhattan had 13,000 inhabitants, making it one of the colonies bigger cities, but hardly a dominant metropolis. The French and Indian War ended the French presence in Canada and increased the relative value of New York s access through the Hudson to the north. The Revolutionary War had an even more remarkable effect on New York City. The port was the only large city that remained in British hands throughout the war. While combat was certainly disruptive, the port s activity also expanded as it provided entry and exit for military men and material. Perhaps just as important, Boston and Philadelphia s long-term reputations as centers of revolution meant that New York would end up being the preferred delivery point for British goods coming into the new republic. As of 1786, Manhattan had 23,614 residents. In the first American census, the City of New York had 33,131 residents. Over the entire period, the population of Manhattan had grown by 1.8 percent annually. This increase is impressive, but ultimately it is far less impressive than the growth of Philadelphia over the same period. Even though New York was larger than Philadelphia in 1790, Philadelphia was a newer city and it had been bigger than New York for many years during the eighteenth century. When the U.S. Constitution was signed in 1789, New York was an important port, but its rise to dominance was still ahead. war-torn period between 1810 and 1820, New York grew by more than 50 percent per decade. Except for the period when New York s population soared because of the incorporation of Brooklyn, the city would never grow by comparable rates again. By 1860, New York was far and away the biggest and most important city in the United States, with almost 250,000 more residents than Philadelphia. Over the 140 years since then, New York s preeminence among American cities has never been challenged. In a sense, the key to understanding New York s tremendous success lies in understanding the period. There are two distinct but closely related growth processes that occurred over this period. First, the port of New York came to dominate American shipping and immigration completely. Second, New York exploded as a manufacturing town, as industries such as sugar, publishing, and most importantly the garment trade clustered around the port. The growth of New York City s port seems like an almost inevitable result of New York s clear geographic advantages (especially when nature was helped along by the Erie Canal). The growth of manufacturing in the city informs us about the nature of agglomeration economies and transportation costs. Albion (1970) describes the increased use of New York City as a dumping ground for European goods. The Napoleonic Wars (and the War of 1812) had severely curtailed trade between the United States and the United Kingdom. As soon as peace was declared, British merchantmen with millions of dollars of goods hastened to America to finally sell these wares. The merchantmen packed large ships and came to New York to Chart 1 Growth of New York City and Manhattan Populations Population in millions 8 3. The Rise to Dominance: New York City If the growth of New York City prior to 1790 was impressive, the expansion over the next seventy years was nothing short of spectacular. Chart 1 depicts the growth of New York City s population since 1790 and the growth of Manhattan s population since Chart 2 shows the growth of New York City and Manhattan as a share of the U.S. population. Between 1790 and 1860, New York City s population rose from 33,131 to 813,669. The annual rate of increase rose from 1.8 percent to 4.7 percent. Chart 3 presents the time path of the decadal growth rates of New York City. During every decade, except the Manhattan Source: U.S. Census Bureau (for city population, : <http:// for borough population, : <http://www.census.gov/ population/cencounts/ny txt>). 10 Urban Colossus

5 Chart 2 Growth of New York City and Manhattan Populations as a Share of U.S. Population Annual rate of increase (percent) New York City/ United States Manhattan relative population Source: U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Census of Population. drop their wares, which were then shipped throughout the republic. This basic pattern became the model for trade with Europe over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At the end of the colonial period, Boston, not New York, was America s premier port. Between 1790 and 1820, New York came to supersede Boston and ultimately attracted a large number of Boston merchants and sailors into its harbor. From 1820 to 1860, New York completely surpassed its northern competition in terms of trade. Chart 4 shows the time path of annual imports, measured in dollars, between 1821 and At the start of the period, New York s exports were $13 million and Boston s were $12 million. By the end of the period, New York s exports were $145 million and Boston s were $17 million. As the chart shows, New Orleans, not Boston or Philadelphia, rivaled New York City by the mid-nineteenth century. What changed? Why had the harbors of Boston and Philadelphia been good enough to be the leading ports of the colonial era, but not good enough to maintain their strength over the nineteenth century? There are actually two different sets of answers to this question. First, there are the technical factors that make New York a somewhat superior port. Second, there are the economic factors that translated this modest geographic superiority into complete mercantile dominance. We start with New York s geographic advantages. One advantage was New York s central location. While Boston is at the northern edge of the United States, New York is in the center. For ships from England and elsewhere trying to make a single delivery to the colonies, New York offered a better location because it would be cheaper to ship goods from there to the southern colonies or Philadelphia than from Boston. One of the great advantages of the Constitution over the Articles of Confederation is that the Constitution significantly reduced the barriers to interstate trade. As these barriers fell, the possibility for interstate trade rose and the advantage of a location near the center of the colonies increased. 1.0 Chart 3 Population Growth Rates of New York City by Decade Percentage growth by decade Source: U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Census of Population (<http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027.html>). Chart 4 Exports from Principal Ports, Millions of dollars Source: Historical Statistics of the United States. New York City Boston New Orleans Philadelphia FRBNY Economic Policy Review / December

6 A second advantage was New York s large river, which facilitated shipping deep into the American continent. The Charles quickly becomes narrow and shallow and is less than 100 miles long. The Hudson is longer than 300 miles and is extremely navigable. The Erie Canal connects the Hudson to the Great Lakes system, which enables goods to travel from the American heartland to Europe completely by water. In an age when water-borne transport was far cheaper than land transport, New York s access to canals, lakes, and rivers gave it a significant edge over most competitors. Philadelphia shared some of New York s advantages of centrality and water access to the interior. Of course, Philadelphia s connection with Pittsburgh and the west used both rail and water, and as such was decidedly more difficult to travel than New York s pure water connection. Moreover, New York enjoys a third advantage over Philadelphia: direct access to the ocean. The port of Philadelphia is more than 100 miles from the Atlantic, whereas the port of New York is less than 20 miles from the ocean. As such, a European ship looking to save time and money would naturally be attracted to New York. The ports along the Chesapeake Bay, such as Baltimore, also suffered from a greater distance to the ocean. Finally, New York s port is also superb in terms of its combination of depth, shelter, and freedom from ice. New York harbor is protected from the ocean by Staten Island and the Brooklyn peninsula. It is much deeper than the harbors of Boston or Philadelphia a factor that became increasingly important as ship tonnage increased starting in the 1790s. Finally, New York harbor is less prone to ice than either Boston or Philadelphia. The advantage over Philadelphia occurs because despite Philadelphia s more southern locale, its location on a river makes its water freeze faster. These advantages were significant, but they implied only that New York would be the first among equals. The city s remarkable dominance over America s exports requires more explanation. Why did New York end up having five or six times the exports of Boston and twenty-five times the exports of Philadelphia in 1860? This question lies at the essence of the agglomeration economies behind cities. The rise of New York City as the dominant port can be seen as an early example of a hub-and-spoke transportation network. In the earliest period of colonial history, the dominant form of transportation between the New and Old Worlds consisted of point-to-point transport, where bales of tobacco were picked up in Virginia and transported to England. But point-to-point transport was plagued by a problem: the exporting areas did not import nearly enough goods from England to fill the ships on their voyage to the Americas. First, the southern plantation owners generally maintained a large current account surplus that was offset either by capital accumulation or by paying debts on the purchase of land and slaves. Second, the manufactured goods that were imported from the Old World used much less space than the tobacco or cotton that was exported. Third, the southern plantation owners found it increasingly efficient to buy from New World producers of manufactured goods or food and avoid the lengthy Atlantic trip. The lack of southern imports can be seen from Chart 5, which shows the imports and exports of New York and New Orleans. Throughout the period, the New York harbor imported more than it exported. This pattern reflected the general tendency of America to run a current account deficit that was offset by shipments of bullion back to the Old World. Throughout the same period, New Orleans maintained a staggering current account surplus. By 1860, New Orleans exported $107 million of goods and imported $22 million of goods. In a sense, this imbalance made it somewhat amazing that New Orleans port could thrive as an export market, despite the enormous advantage of being at the mouth of the Mississippi. This lack of coincidence of wants was solved in the eighteenth century by the early triangle trade, in which manufactured goods in England were brought to Africa and traded for slaves, which were in turn brought to the Caribbean and the South. The ships reloaded with plantation produce that was then sent to England. But this triangle could hardly survive the elimination of the slave trade in Moreover, the elimination of the slave trade coincided with an enormous increase in the production of cotton following Eli Whitney s invention of the cotton gin in At the same time as the 200 Chart 5 Exports and Imports of New York and New Orleans Millions of dollars New Orleans imports New York City exports Source: Historical Statistics of the United States. New York City imports New Orleans exports 12 Urban Colossus

7 South had more and more to export, the importation of slaves became illegal. The cotton triangle in New York City solved this problem. Cotton was shipped to New York and was transferred from coastal ships to trans-atlantic lines. Manufactured goods, often made in the city, went south. Ships coming to New York were filled with imported goods from the Old World. Ships leaving the city were filled with cotton and other basic commodities being shipped east. While the New York port of the eighteenth century had focused on shipping flour grown in the vicinity of the harbor, the port of the nineteenth century became a conduit through which a large amount of the colonies trade would pass. The cotton triangle is just one example of New York becoming a hub connecting two spokes. Obviously, New York also connected the river, lake, and canal traffic from the west with the trans-atlantic ships to the New World. Tobacco products from the South came to New York from Baltimore and other, more southern, ports. More surprisingly, New York also served as a hub for goods from Philadelphia and even Boston. For example, Boston textile producers would often ship their wares to New York to be sold in that large entrepot to buyers from across the country. Similarly, Philadelphia shipped coal from the Pennsylvania anthracite mines up to Manhattan. The increasing attractiveness of hub-and-spoke shipping owed much to changes in shipping technology. Two large changes occurred, which added advantages to having a focal port. First, trans-atlantic ships became increasingly large over the early nineteenth century. For example, Albion (1970, p. 398) reports that in 1834, 1,950 vessels entered New York harbor carrying 465,000 tons of cargo. In 1860, 3,982 vessels entered the harbor carrying 1,983,000 tons of cargo. The average tonnage per ship entering the harbor increased from 238 to 498 tons of cargo over that twenty-six-year period. The rise in ship size is particularly clear when considering the packet lines that provided regular service from New York to Liverpool. In the early 1820s, these ships typically carried between 300 and 400 tons. By 1838, 1,000 tons became normal and the Amazon carried 1,771 tons in 1854 (Albion 1970). These large ships provided great scale economies in the sense that they required smaller crews per ton. Furthermore, they were generally safer and faster than their smaller predecessors. However, large ships created an indivisibility that makes the gains from a centralized port obvious. While small ships could readily go point-to-point, dropping their small cargoes at disparate locations, large ships needed a market that could accept their bigger cargoes. This created a centralizing tendency, just as scale economies and indivisibilities do in standard models of economic geography (Krugman 1991). This effect is exactly parallel to the tendency to use the largest planes only for travel between the largest airports. These bigger ships also increased the advantage inherent in New York s deeper harbor. Although Philadelphia could readily compete in handling the shallow draft ships of the eighteenth century, the Delaware was simply not deep enough to handle regular commerce with the largest ships of the nineteenth century. The second significant change of the nineteenth century was an increase in specialized shipping, which was itself a byproduct of the increased use of large ships for trans-atlantic crossings. In a small-ship world, the ships that plied the coastal trade and the ships that crossed the ocean were not all that different. However, the rise of big ships meant that it became efficient to use different ships to carry goods up and down the American coast and to carry goods across the Atlantic. Small ships are far more appropriate for picking up smaller cargoes and carrying them on shallower waters. Big ships had more of a risk of running aground, and could not be used to pick up the smaller cargoes being shipped to and from the disparate settlements of the young republic. Instead, it increasingly made sense to use smaller ships, such as schooners, to ply the coastal trade. These ships would then bring their cargoes to New York and be consolidated into larger cargoes carried in big ships for the trans-atlantic crossing. These technological advantages were further abetted by learning-by-doing, specialized investment in port-related infrastructure, and the agglomeration of manufacturing (described in the next section). There is little doubt that New York gradually acquired an unequal set of skills and institutions that supported large-scale trade. Its auction houses and insurance system became the largest in the Americas. New York invested in its wharves, further enhancing its port. Indeed, the Erie Canal should also be seen as a form of port-related investment that further exacerbated its initial advantages. As trade became more intricate and as financial transactions became larger, gains to specialization increased. As such, the initial advantage that New York had because of its deep harbor and central location ultimately translated into massive dominance as a port. The rise of the New York port does not illustrate a random accident leading to geographic concentration. New York was the best port in the United States and it should have been the largest. However, its rise does show the conditions under which an initial advantage, which might have been slight, translates into vast scale. Probably the most important reason for centralization was the mismatch between supply and demand, especially in the southern colonies. This mismatch in New York s case, as in most cases, led to the advantages of a large market that eliminated the need for bilateral commodity transactions. A secondary factor was the changes in technology FRBNY Economic Policy Review / December

8 that create larger boats and benefits from specialization. These changes also created scale economies in the port. Finally, these advantages were further advanced by trade-specific infrastructure and trade-specific human capital, which became increasingly important in the more complicated world of the nineteenth century. 3.1 The Rise of the Manufacturing City Although the rise of New York City as a port is a striking example of agglomeration economies at work, the majority of New York s burgeoning population was not involved either directly in commerce or in the maritime trades. While Boston specialized in seafaring men, New York s population increasingly engaged in manufacturing. As early as 1820, New York had 9,523 workers in manufacturing and 3,142 in commerce. By 1850, there were 43,340 people in manufacturing and 11,360 in commerce. New York s port may have been the catalyst for the city s rise, but New Yorkers were far more likely to be involved in producing manufactured goods than in working on the ships themselves. Drennan and Matson (1995) include data from the census of manufacturers in various decades. The dominant industries, measured by value, are generally sugar refining, printing and publishing, and the garment industry. In the 1810 economic census, sugar refining was the largest industry, and it was responsible for more than one-third of the value of total manufactured products in the city. In 1870, sugar would be the second-largest industry, by value, in New York City and the largest industry in Kings County (Brooklyn). Even in 1900, sugar was the second-largest industry in the city. Needless to say, sugar s dominance did not continue into the twentieth century. The sugar industry began in New York in the eighteenth century, when Nicholas Bayard opened the first sugar refinery in the city in Several other refineries followed and in the nineteenth century, the Havemeyers began refining in Brooklyn. Sugar refining, certainly relative to the garment industry, was highly capital intensive for its day. The refineries were large industrial undertakings that produced vast returns for early industrialists. New York s dominant role in the sugar industry resulted from its trade with the West Indies, which increasingly specialized in sugar production in the 1750s and 1760s. During this period, New York flour was shipped to the Caribbean and raw sugar was one of the commodities that returned in the holds of the ships. The raw sugar would be refined in New York and consumed in the city, or shipped elsewhere. This pattern would continue after the Revolutionary War, when New York s central role as the hub of a trading network meant that sugar passed through the city on its way both to Europe and to markets within the United States. But why was New York the natural place to refine sugar? In principle, sugar could have been refined in the West Indies at the final point of consumption. In the case of some commodities, processing removes so much weight that it is generally efficient to engage in processing at source. Indeed, even in the case of sugar, it would have been madness to ship untouched sugar cane up to New York for processing without first turning the sugar cane into raw sugar. The excess weight would have badly compromised profits, and even more important, unprocessed sugar cane rots quickly. While initial processing must be done soon after the cane is cut to avoid rot and close to the sugar plantation to avoid the carrying of excess weight, sugar refining occurs close to where the sugar is to be consumed (Galloway 1989, p. 17). Galloway writes, the fundamental reason for the separation of the final stage in the manufacture of sugar refining from the cane fields, a separation that in the western world dates back several hundred years, lies in the fact that crystals of sugar coalesce during the human conditions of a long sea voyage, and so any imported refined sugar would have had to have been reworked if customers were to have received the top quality. Galloway also emphasizes the lack of cheap fuel for refining in the tropics, and he might have also stressed the high cost of labor in the tropics that was skilled enough to run refineries. Sugar refining occurred in North America rather than in the Caribbean because of high transport costs, but sugar refining occurred in New York rather than in small towns throughout the country because of scale economies. By the standards of early-nineteenth-century industry, sugar refining involved large infrastructure investment and significant fixed costs. Sugar refineries were among the largest factories of this early period. These scale economies meant that it was impractical to spread sugar refineries throughout the colonies in every town or village. The technology of sugar production almost dictated that sugar refining occur in a central location close to most centers of consumption, and New York City was an ideal central location. The strength of the sugar industry in New York therefore owes everything to the city s role as a shipping hub connecting Caribbean ports both with the American hinterland and with European final consumers. The scale economies in sugar refining are strong enough that it makes sense to centralize, and centralized production is most efficient if it occurs in the port through which the sugar is passing anyway. The growth of sugar manufacturing shows a basic pattern for the growth of 14 Urban Colossus

9 New York as a manufacturing center. Trade brought raw commodities through the city. In cases where manufacturing in the initial agricultural area was inefficient, but where it made sense to manufacture in a single place, this gateway city was the natural site to create finished products. While the sugar refining industry produced a great deal of value, it generally only included a modest number of New Yorkers. For example, in 1860, the economic census of manufacturers reported 1,494 employees in sugar refining in New York City making more than $19,000,000 of products. By contrast, the garment industry employed 26,857 workers in that same year and produced $22,320,769 of goods. From the mid-nineteenth century through 1970, the garment trade remained New York City s dominant manufacturing industry, at least in terms of total employment. In 1860, almost 30 percent of New York City manufacturing employment was in the garment industry. In 1900, 19 percent of New York s manufacturing employment was in that sector. In 1940 and 1967, 27 percent of manufacturing employment was in garments. New York was generally a diversified economy, but to the extent that one industry dominated the city for a century, it was the garment trade. The basic economics of the nineteenthcentury New York garment industry are not so different than the economics of the sugar refining industry. The essence of this industry is turning cloth into clothing. Cloth was generally produced in textile mills, either in England or later in the textile mills of New England. As was the case with sugar, cloth and silk came through Manhattan. Similarly, there was a strong economic rationale to have manufacturing centered at the port of entry. The starting point for the textile trade was England s commercial dominance as an exporter of wool and cotton cloth. This dominance was historical, but at the end of the eighteenth century, early industrialization gave English manufacturers a huge advantage in the production of textiles. This advantage, and the general importance of clothing in budgets, meant that in the first half of the nineteenth century, textiles amounted to nearly 60 percent of England s domestic exports and about one-third of the imports of the United States (Albion 1970, p. 58). This trade increasingly came through New York with the city s dominance of trans-atlantic shipping. In 1860, more than 80 percent of the nation s textiles entered through New York. In the same year, wool, cotton, and silk goods accounted for 37 percent of the imports coming into the harbor. England was the only producer sending textiles into America through New York harbor. The city was also the entryway for silks from France and even China. As New England mills began production and competed with English producers, even they found themselves shipping cloth to Manhattan to take advantage of this central market. The vast flow of cloth into Manhattan was the natural result of New York s dominance as a port and textile s dominance as an item of trade. In the early part of the nineteenth century, this trade did not create a garment industry. In the 1810 economic census, New York City had significant tanneries and hatteries, but not a significant garment trade. Fifty years later, the garment industry had become the city s largest industry. The big change occurred because of the rise of the ready-to-wear industry. In 1810, cloth was turned into clothing by tailors, seamstresses, and by the end users themselves. There were no factories for the production of clothes. When clothes were made-to-measure, there was no place for centralized production of garments. At the start of the nineteenth century, therefore, New York s garment industry consisted mainly of tailors catering to the local population. Over the nineteenth century, there were changes both in demand and production technology that turned New York into a center of ready-to-wear clothes. On the demand side, the rising slave population of the South had a demand for extremely cheap, ready-to-wear clothing. George Opdyke began the manufacture of ready-to-wear clothing in New York in 1831, catering to the market in New Orleans. The changes in production technology included the development of the factory system, and even more important, Elias Howe s invention of the sewing machine in Mechanization greatly decreased the costs of mass production relative to custom tailoring and furthered the rise of the ready-to-wear garment industry. Once such an industry existed, and given that there were substantial scale economies in the production of clothes due to machinery and specialized human capital, it is hardly surprising that this industry centered in New York City. Given that the cloth came into that city, there was no reason to wait until the cloth reached its final destination before transforming it into shirts and pants. There would be few advantages to making ready-to-make clothes in disparate locations rather than in one centralized locale. As with sugar, we must ask why manufacturing did not occur in the place where the raw material was first produced, which in this case was England. First, while England had a long history of cloth production, it had no history of producing ready-to-make clothes. No place did in As a result, England had no natural advantage in this form of manufacturing. New York manufacturers had the advantage of better knowledge of local demand, and could therefore cater to local tastes. They had access to relatively inexpensive labor from the increasing immigrant populations. In short, there FRBNY Economic Policy Review / December

10 were probably only mild advantages to centralizing ready-tomake clothing in New York rather than in London, but these small advantages were enough for this industry to be located on the American side of the Atlantic. Another important point about the garment trade, which helps explain its 100-year dominance in New York, is that among manufacturing industries, its need for physical space and power was quite mild. Textile mills themselves were more efficient on a grand scale, and in the first part of the nineteenth century, the mills needed water power. As a result, they were generally located away from urban areas along the banks of rivers like the Merrimack. By contrast, the garment trade involved human beings and relatively small sewing machines. In many cases, working women could contract work to be done in their own apartments. This was the ideal industry for a city where land was expensive. Over the decades, New York developed an increasing human and physical infrastructure that supported the continuing presence of the garment trade even after the port s primacy had passed. Factories were built to cater to this trade. Singer came to New York to popularize his adaptation of the Howe sewing machine. An entire section of the city (the Garment District) became oriented toward clothing production, and a network of spatially proximate suppliers catered to this industry. Perhaps even more important, the city s industry attracted skilled workers who created a powerful agglomerating force that trained new workers and attracted entrepreneurs. There was an initial comparative advantage in manufacturing garments that came from New York s port, but this advantage produced an agglomeration that kept the industry in the city. The third-largest manufacturing industry in the city in 1860 was printing and publishing. As late as the 1960s, publishing would be a distant second to garment manufacturing in its share of New York employment. Only in the past thirty years has publishing passed garment manufacturing to become New York s largest manufacturing industry. Still, value added per worker was generally much higher in this industry than in the garment trade. Moreover, the rise of New York publishing suggests the increasing role of New York as a city centered around the transfer of ideas. Somewhat surprisingly, the early development of New York s publishing trade was also linked to the city s role as a port connecting America with the Old World. In the early nineteenth century the big money, however, came from pirated copies of English authors (who didn t yet have to be paid royalties because the United States government refused to as yet to recognize foreign copyrights) (Burrows and Wallace 1999, p. 441). As such, there was a huge advantage in this industry to being the first printer with a copy of the latest London sensation and printers and book dealers in New York and Philadelphia competed furiously to bring out the first American editions of new English novels (Burrows and Wallace, p. 441). In this competitive atmosphere, being at the center of the trans-atlantic trade offered a crucial advantage. New York printers would have been capable of receiving new novels from England more quickly and regularly than their Philadelphia competitors because of the more frequent sea traffic between New York and Liverpool. The closer connections between New York and England also ensured a steadier infusion of information about the latest books. New York s production advantages were complemented by the advantages in distributing to western consumers via the Erie Canal. As in the case of the garment trade, this initial advantage stuck because of specialized human capital and the advantages that came from local agglomeration economies. New York attracted networks of suppliers and tradesmen who catered to the book producers. Book sellers from around the country would come to New York for book fairs to get access to the latest novels. Eventually, the combination of high costs of land and low transport costs would push the printing presses themselves off of Manhattan, but to this day, there is a strong community of publishing houses in Manhattan connecting with authors and potential customers. While publishing English novels was one part of the early success of Manhattan publishing, news was the other cornerstone of this industry. Information was extremely valuable to the growing mercantile economy, and most of the early papers focused on providing this information. Scale economies in this industry also meant that New York had a disproportionate number of newspapers. As the news became entertainment, and even entertainment for the masses, scale economies and New York s large population ensured that the city would remain a center for newspaper production. The central lesson of the rise of New York in the early nineteenth century is that manufacturing congregated around a port. Changes in transportation technologies turned New York into the preeminent port of the United States. This meant that raw inputs, including sugar, cloth, and even English novels, came into the city first. The first manufacturing industries were based on these raw inputs. As scale economies rose with industrialization, production was increasingly centralized in the one place that welcomed the nation s imports of these inputs. 16 Urban Colossus

11 4. The Immigrant City: While New York City was the largest city in the country in 1860, it would continue to grow significantly over the next ninety years. Over this period, the population of the city increased from 813,000 to 7.9 million. Much of this increase reflected the incorporation of the outer boroughs into New York City, but even Manhattan s population continued to grow until As shown in Chart 2, New York reached its peak relative to the U.S. population as a whole in 1940, when 5.6 percent of the U.S. population lived in the city. Manhattan was at its largest relative to the nation in 1910, when almost 3 percent of the U.S. population lived on the island. During this amazing period, the basic structure of the New York economy was remarkably static. The city remained primarily manufacturing-oriented. In 1910, there were 873,497 employees in manufacturing, 40 percent of New York s total. Trade and transportation had slightly more than 500,000 employees and domestic service included more than 330,000 workers. The primary export industries were manufactured goods and the transportation sector. New York s port remained the biggest in the nation during this era. Even more remarkable, the composition of manufacturing employment remained constant across industries. The garment trade declined somewhat as a share of overall employment, but it remained New York s dominant industry. Sugar refining, printing, tobacco, and bread all remained big products. In the first half of the nineteenth century, New York s population explosion was connected with a radical restructuring of the city economy and the rise of manufacturing. In the second half of the nineteenth century, New York s population increases continued despite the fact that the basic structure of production remained remarkably constant. Still, there were trends that supported the growth of New York s industries, particularly the garment trade, during this period. Demand for finished clothing increased steadily as populations and incomes rose in the country as a whole. Input prices dropped significantly over the period. For example, the Warren and Pearson index of the wholesale cost of textiles shows a 20 percent decline relative to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index during these years. As the South recovered from the Civil War, cotton in particular became less expensive: the cost per pound of raw cotton fell from 29 cents in 1869 to 11 cents in Wool dropped from 90 cents per pound in 1870 to less than 40 cents in the mid- 1890s. Despite the continuing strengths of New York City s industries, it would be a mistake to ignore the explosion of immigration to America from Europe. Chart 6 shows the levels of immigration into the United States by decadal frequencies between 1820 and Prior to 1841, annual immigration had always been below 90,000. Except for the five years between 1849 and 1854, immigration never passed 250,000 per year until After the Civil War, as the chart shows, immigration began to soar. There were almost 400,000 immigrants in There were 450,000 immigrants in 1880, 1890, and 1900; between 1903 and 1914, there were almost 12 million immigrants. The overwhelming share of these immigrants entered the United States through the port of New York City. Again, New York s dominance as a port meant that it was the center for the import of America s most significant economic input: its labor force. The rise in immigration is probably best seen as the result of declining transportation costs in trans-atlantic passenger travel. Just as improvements in shipping ensured that New York captured a larger share of the goods shipped into the United States in the early nineteenth century, continuing improvements in sea travel meant that New York was able to retain an increasingly large group of immigrants. These reductions in travel costs were accompanied by political problems in European countries like Russia that terrorized their Jewish citizens with pogroms and by a continuing gap between high American wages and worse economic prospects in the poorer European countries. Accompanying these factors was the phenomenon of chain migration, in which an initial group of immigrants made it more socially comfortable for later immigrants to follow. 1,000, ,000 Chart 6 Immigration to the United States Number of immigrants Source: Historical Statistics of the United States. FRBNY Economic Policy Review / December

12 The reason for the vast number of immigrants who stayed in New York, and who continued to settle (at least temporarily) in the city, can be understood as the result of four factors. First, transportation costs for internal transport within the United States were still high enough to make it cheaper to just stay in New York. This factor would have been particularly important for immigrants from poorer countries such as Italy, Austria- Hungary, and Russia, who were frequently stretched to their financial limits by the trans-atlantic journey itself. After making the long and costly trip across the ocean, many immigrants simply did not want to spend the time and money to travel further. Second, New York s economy may have kept its basic structure over this period, but it still showed a remarkable ability to increase its scale with the influx of new labor. The rising American population meant that demand for garments continued to rise, and there was nothing intrinsic to the production process that limited even more production within the city. The garment industry was also special in the sense that it relied on skills that were more prevalent among immigrants than the skills required in more advanced industries. Third, improvements in transportation technologies for within-city transport increasingly made development out of the boroughs feasible. New York began its omnibus routes in the 1820s. Streetcars and the subway line soon followed. The introduction of the automobile was soon accompanied by that of the bus. Public transportation made it possible for new immigrants to occupy the outlying boroughs and commute into the city. Fourth, and perhaps most significantly, the city itself acquired considerable immigrant-specific social and political infrastructure that made, and continues to make, New York a magnet for immigration. The most important form of this infrastructure may be large communities of immigrants from specific countries. These communities allowed new immigrants to come to New York while continuing to speak their own language. In these areas, suppliers provided commodities that were closer to those that the immigrants had consumed in their home countries. It was certainly easier for a Jewish Orthodox immigrant to keep kosher in the Lower East Side of Manhattan than in rural Minnesota. Immigrants provided the voting base for Tammany Hall during this period, and city services as a result were oriented toward immigrant needs. This meant that judges were quick to approve naturalization and that the city machine stood ready to provide patronage and emergency supplies to new arrivals. Churches and synagogues were built to cater to the growing immigrant population. Indeed, New York had been an immigrant town well before the Civil War, so there was a long tradition of providing economic services and employment to new arrivals. Did the flow of immigrants in the late nineteenth century mean that New York City s labor supply was outstripping labor demand? Long time series on wages for the city are not available, but we can show the time path of average wages (in 2005 dollars) for production workers in manufacturing for New York State and the nation as a whole (Chart 7). If New York s growth primarily reflects labor supply, we would expect wages in the city to fall relative to wages in the nation as a whole. If New York s growth reflects labor demand, we would expect wages in the city to increase. Chart 7 shows that from 1870 to 1890, manufacturing wages were rising in the United States as a whole, and the New York State wage premium increased from 7 percent to 13 percent. Labor supply may have been increasing during this period, but labor demand in both New York and the nation was increasing even faster. From 1890 to 1914, real manufacturing wages in New York State declined and the New York State wage premium fell back to only 3 percent. This period of declining real wages in the state corresponds with the period when immigration truly exploded. These figures suggest that during the twenty-five years after the Civil War, labor demand increases outpaced labor supply, especially in New York, perhaps as a result of declining costs of inputs and rising demand in the country as a whole. Changes in transportation technology made it increasingly possible for manufacturers to locate in the city and sell their wares throughout the world. New industrial technologies and products also strengthened the local economy. New York remained innovative, and this Chart 7 Average Manufacturing Wages in New York State and the United States 2005 dollars 20,000 15,000 10, New York State Source: U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Census of Population. United States 18 Urban Colossus

13 characteristic helped to ensure that rising population levels did not push wages down precipitously. However, between 1890 and 1914, the growth of the city had more to do with the immigrant shock to labor supply than with increases in labor demand. Nonetheless, the driving force behind the rise of New York City s population and the continuing growth of the city s economy was the steady influx of immigrants between 1890 and The immigrants came to America because of higher wages, better safety, and cheaper ocean travel. They stayed in New York for the same reasons that cotton and sugar were processed in the city: because of lower transportation costs and because New York specialized in imports. 5. The Rise of the Information City: New York s immigrant boom ended with the national restriction on immigration in The quota law drove immigration down significantly and ended the prewar explosion of immigration to the island of Manhattan. For the first time in decades, the foreign born would represent a declining share of New York s population. This negative shock was accompanied by a pair of technological shocks that would hurt almost all of America s larger cities. First, the rise of the automobile made cities such as New York, which had been built around older transportation technologies, somewhat obsolete. Automobiles, at least in lowdensity, car-oriented areas, are much faster means of travel than public transportation. The average commute by car in the United States is twenty-three minutes, compared with fortyseven minutes for public transportation. New York and other cities are built at higher densities to take advantage of public transportation and to allow travelers to walk from public transport stops to their final destination. Car-based communities are built at much lower densities to allow automobiles to drive without congestion and to allow the consumption of more land. Second, the rise of the truck led to a spectacular decline in transportation costs and a decrease in the need for high-density work environments. Glaeser and Kohlhase (2004) estimate that the real cost of transportation declined by 95 percent over the twentieth century. As such, cities like New York that were built to take advantage of transportation technologies lost this comparative advantage. Moreover, the truck does not require the same centralized infrastructure as the older form of shipping technology does. This meant that manufacturing no longer needed to cluster around a port or a train station. Over the twentieth century, manufacturing left large cities and is now generally located in medium-density countries (Glaeser 2005). Chart 8 presents a long time series of the share of national manufacturing employment that was located in New York State; Chart 9 shows the decline in manufacturing both in New York City as a whole and in Manhattan after These shocks impacted New York City just as they did all of America s major cities. Table 1 shows the time path of population levels (after 1950) for the ten largest cities in the 0.20 Chart 8 Manufacturing Employment in New York State Relative to the United States Share of manufacturing (in New York) Chart 9 Manufacturing Employment over Time in New York City and Manhattan Number employed 1,000, ,000 New York City ,000 Manhattan , , Source: U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Census of Population and U.S. Manufacturing Census. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States (1946, 1956, 1967, 1977, 1983, 1994, 2000). FRBNY Economic Policy Review / December

14 United States in Every city but Los Angeles lost population in the 1950s and the 1970s. Every city but New York and Los Angeles lost population in the 1960s. Every city but New York, Boston, and Los Angeles lost population in the 1980s. In the 1990s, New York, Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles all managed to lose population. The figures in the table show the generally declining period experienced after World War II by all major cities as transportation technologies made high-density living in traditional manufacturing towns relatively much less attractive. Table 1 makes it clear that the remarkable thing about New York City is not its postwar decline, but rather its success relative to other older cities. Only in the 1970s did New York lose more than 1 percent of its population. Even in that decade, it lost the least amount of population of any of these cities (again, except for Los Angeles). New York oriented writers often emphasize the city s big problems during the 1970s, but such a focus ignores the fact that almost every other traditional city fared far worse during this period. The era of Lindsay and Beame may have had its problems, but New York was in much better shape than either Detroit or Philadelphia during the same period. After World War II, New York had many of the same problems that plagued other large cities. Crime skyrocketed between 1960 and 1975, and the increase in crime made wider social problems more visible. Bad urban governance, which in most cases had been going on for decades, became more obvious during a period of urban decline when steadily increasing tax receipts could not hide waste and mismanagement. Furthermore, decaying infrastructure made the city seem grungy. However, New York survived these problems better than its peers did mainly because its economy remained more robust. While the economies of Philadelphia, Detroit, and Pittsburgh never truly survived the collapse of local manufacturing, New York (like Boston) has reinvented itself over the past eighty years as a service city increasingly oriented around finance and corporate management. New York continues to boom to this day primarily because of finance and business services. Table 2 shows the 2002 distribution of employment in Manhattan. Twenty-eight percent of the city s payroll is in a single three-digit industry: security, commodity contracts, and like activity. This level of concentration is even higher than the commitment of the city to the garment trade during the height of that industry. Another 28.5 percent of total payroll is in three other industries: business, scientific, and services (mostly lawyers and accountants); credit intermediation; and company management. Together, the four industries account for 56.6 percent of total payroll in Manhattan. When Chinitz (1961) compared agglomeration in New York and Pittsburgh, he emphasized the remarkably diverse nature of the New York economy. This is no longer the case. Manhattan employment is remarkably dependent on finance, business management, and business services. This is not true in the city s outlying boroughs, which employ primarily in nontraded service sectors. Tables 3 and 4 show the importance of health care, for example, in the economies of Brooklyn and Queens. Both boroughs also have Table 2 Employment in Manhattan, 2002 Three-Digit Industry Name Employment Share of Total (1.99 Million) Payroll (Thousands of Dollars) Share of Total (150 Billion) Payroll/Worker Professional, scientific, and technical services (541) 261, ,389, ,902 Security, commodity contracts, and like activity (523) 210, ,107, ,601 Administrative and support services (561) 142, ,521, ,669 Food services and drinking places (722) 107, ,208, ,489 Educational services (611) 94, ,764, ,648 Credit intermediation and related activities (522) 90, ,191, ,207 Management of companies and enterprises (551) 84, ,059, ,597 Hospitals (622) 73, ,320, ,004 Religious, grantmaking, civil, professional, and like activity (813) 67, ,955, ,569 Ambulatory health care services (621) 67, ,660, ,480 Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2002 County Business Patterns for New York, New York (<http://www.census.gov/epcd/cbp/map/02data/36/061.txt>). 20 Urban Colossus

15 Table 3 Employment in Brooklyn, 2002 Three-Digit Industry Name Employment Share of Total (435,948) Payroll (Thousands of Dollars) Share of Total (13.9 Billion) Payroll/Worker Ambulatory and health care services (621) 54, ,682, ,845 Hospitals (622) 45, ,315, ,341 Social assistance (624) 21, , ,785 Educational services (611) 21, , ,659 Food services and drinking places (722) 18, , ,212 Administrative and support services (561) 17, , ,160 Nursing and residential care facilities (623) 16, , ,219 Special trade contractors (235) 14, , ,985 Wholesale trade, nondurable goods (422) 14, , ,151 Professional, scientific, and technical services (541) 14, , ,378 Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2002 County Business Patterns for Kings, New York (<http://www.census.gov/epcd/cbp/map/02data/36/047.txt>). Table 4 Employment in Queens, 2002 Three-Digit Industry Name Employment Share of Total (468,585) Payroll (Thousands of Dollars) Share of Total (16.8 Billion) Payroll/Worker Ambulatory and health care services (621) 37, ,146, ,768 Special trade contractors (235) 29, ,541, ,551 Air transportation (481) 27, ,448, ,660 Food services and drinking places (722) 26, , ,064 Hospitals (622) 24, ,288, ,103 Administrative and support services (561) 21, , ,202 Nursing and residential care facilities (623) 16, , ,128 Professional, scientific, and technical services (541) 14, , ,329 Wholesale trade, durable goods (421) 13, , ,996 Educational services (611) 13, , ,861 Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2002 County Business Patterns for Queens, New York (<http://www.census.gov/epcd/cbp/map/02data/36/081.txt>). export sectors, such as Queens airport industry, but these are much smaller economic areas and are much more oriented toward providing services to the residents of the greater New York area. New York s move into finance and management is not really paralleled by any of the other older cities. Perhaps the closest parallel to New York is Chicago, which, during the past decade, has somewhat remade itself around business services. Boston s post-1980 renaissance is completely different and should be seen as the result of small-scale entrepreneurship in a number of disparate, high-human-capital sectors. The other large cities are still in decline and cannot be said to have found any meaningful replacement for the manufacturing firms that once employed thousands of their citizens. The success of New York as a financial city suggests three questions. How did New York become the financial capital of the world? Why has New York s dominance managed to expand in the modern era? Will New York manage to continue to survive on the basis of its financial industries? Unsurprisingly, the origins of New York s financial community lie in its role as a port. The financial sector on Wall Street has its origins as an organization designed around sharing risk on sea voyages. This financial community branched into government securities in the 1790s. In the early FRBNY Economic Policy Review / December

16 nineteenth century, New York was a close rival to Philadelphia as a center for trading stocks and bonds. Eventually, New York replaced Philadelphia for at least three reasons. New York s greater connection to England became increasingly important in the late nineteenth century as English capital financed American development. New York s greater size meant that there were more companies in New York, which had a direct, local market for financing. Finally, the great incentive to agglomerate in finance comes from the desire for the latest information. In no other industry are the returns to knowing the latest fact greater; this meant that once New York had a slight edge, the edge turned into a complete preponderance as the financial community came to the city to obtain access to the latest information. The rise to world dominance by New York s financial community was a twentieth-century phenomenon that followed the decline of New York as a port. Instead, there are two major agglomeration economies at work. The first is the role of the dense city as a center for idea flows. The high value of knowledge meant that being in the city was particularly valuable. New York s high density levels, which ended up being unattractive for most manufacturing firms, may have even helped New York finance continue to thrive because those high density levels are particularly conducive to chance meetings, regular exchanges of new ideas, and the general flow of information. Chart 10 depicts the rising share of U.S. and New York City employment in finance, insurance, and real estate. The concentration of New York City in this sector is much lower than the concentration of Manhattan in this sector, and the concentration of employment is much lower than the concentration of payroll. Nonetheless, the city has much more of its employment in this area than does the United States as a whole. Furthermore, both city and national data show that this sector is increasing employment. Somewhat surprisingly, the decade in which the share of New York City employment in this sector increased the most was the 1970s. In 1970, 7.4 percent of the city s employment was in this sector; by 1980, 12 percent was in the sector. This change reflected both the increase of finance and the decline of other industries, such as manufacturing. As such, it may make sense to date New York s dependence on this sector to New York s high density levels and massive scale drove its success as a center of business services. The cost of delivering manufactured goods depends only on transportation technology, but the cost of delivering services depends both on technology and on the value of the time involved by the participants in the transaction. Because services are by definition face-to-face, during an era of rising wages there is an increased incentive to agglomerate these activities. This simple Chart 10 Share of Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE) Employment in New York City and the United States Percent FIRE as share of New York City employment Source: U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Census of Population. FIRE as share of U.S. employment argument can explain why New York was able to thrive at the same time that its manufacturing base was fleeing. Services replaced manufacturing because of the transportation cost advantages of locating in a large, dense city. The flow of information and the ability to buy and sell business services are the reasons why Manhattan has survived as the center of world finance. But if finance had remained at its 1940 level, it would have had no effect on the long-run fortunes of New York. The city s great fortune was that at the same time that it was suffering from an exodus of the garment trade, the international financial sector boomed. Individuals saved and invested more. Improvements in communication technology and changes in regulation made it increasingly attractive for people to become involved in New York s formal economic markets. Firms had an ongoing demand for financing. The industry soared and New York was its center. However, it is less obvious that this trend will continue. New York City is still the epicenter for the transmission of new ideas in finance, but the past fifteen years have seen a remarkable growth of cutting-edge financial institutions in the caroriented edge cities surrounding the metropolis. Some of the more famous and infamous financial market participants have been located far from Manhattan (Warren Buffett in Omaha, Peter Lynch in Boston, Michael Milken in Los Angeles). As important as face-to-face contact appears to be, information technologies have made major inroads, and the continuing economic vitality of New York City is less obvious than it was fifteen years ago. A final point on the future of New York worth emphasizing is that the city recently has made remarkable progress in changing itself from a relatively unattractive to a relatively 22 Urban Colossus

17 attractive place to live. In 1970, real wages in New York were quite high, which was necessary to compensate workers for crime and other problems associated with the city. In 2000, real wages were much lower. Nominal wages have risen, reflecting in part the continuing vitality of the financial sector, but prices have risen even more. This rise in real wages relates to the increasing demand for New York as a consumer city. If the city is able to continue to attract financial professionals who want the excitement of New York, then it can thrive from the labor supply just as it did during the period of immigration of the late nineteenth century. 6. Conclusion In Glaeser (2005), we argue that the long-term success of Boston reflects a process of ongoing reinvention, whereby smart entrepreneurs react to a continuing set of crises by discovering new ways to turn a profit and still live in that city. New York s history is far more continuous, more stable, and more triumphant. The city s rise to dominance occurs during the early nineteenth century and is driven primarily by New York s advantages as a port. Manufacturing, immigration, and even finance followed from this maritime supremacy. The ultimate success of New York comes from its role as the center of the global trading network. There are several lessons for urban and regional economics from the economic history of New York City. First, there is something to be said for geographic determinism. New York City should have had the biggest harbor and it did. However, we cannot appreciate the full extent of the city s dominance without understanding that agglomeration economies and New York s rise to dominance as a port are associated with the increasing scale of ships and the benefits of specialization. A second lesson from New York is that transportation costs really matter. The city s port status obviously came about in large part because of these advantages, but its role as a center for immigration and as a sugar refinery also came about largely because of cost savings that resulted from reduced transportation costs. This point may be less relevant today in the manufacturing sector, but the ongoing importance of transportation costs in business services helps explain New York s continuing strength in that area. A third lesson is the obvious importance of what Henderson (1977) calls localization economies. Generally speaking, every industry has some form of very specific industry-related needs that were met by agglomeration in New York. Indeed, even the concentration of immigrants tends to suggest a benefit from very particular groups of immigrants locating near one another. These agglomeration economies helped ensure that initial transportation-cost-based agglomerations did not disappear as transportation costs fell. A fourth and final lesson is that New York s success for centuries has been connected to its edge as an idea city. Publishing centered in New York because people there could read the latest books from England more quickly. Sugar refining and the garment trade were located in New York, as opposed to places that made primary products, in part because of the information gains offered by the city. Finally, and most spectacularly, for almost 200 years, the success of New York s financial sector owes a great deal to the city s role as a place where the latest news can be picked up quickly. FRBNY Economic Policy Review / December

18 References Albion, R The Rise of New York Port [ ]. New York: Scribners. Burrows, E., and M. Wallace Gotham: A History of New York City to New York: Oxford University Press. Chinitz, B. J Contrasts in Agglomeration: New York and Pittsburgh. American Economic Review 51, no. 2 (May): Drennan, M., and C. Matson Economy. In K. T. Jackson, ed., The Encyclopedia of New York City, New Haven: Yale University Press. Galloway, J. H The Sugar Cane Industry: An Historical Geography from Its Origins to Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Glaeser, E. L Reinventing Boston: Journal of Economic Geography 5, no. 2 (April): Glaeser, E. L., and J. Kohlhase Cities, Regions, and the Decline of Transport Costs. Papers in Regional Science 83, no. 1 (January): Henderson, J. V Economic Theory and the Cities. New York: Academic Press. Kantrowitz, N Population. In K. T. Jackson, ed., The Encyclopedia of New York City, New Haven: Yale University Press. Krugman, P Increasing Returns and Economic Geography. Journal of Political Economy 99, no. 3 (June): Gaspar, J., and E. L. Glaeser Information Technology and the Future of Cities. Journal of Urban Economics 43, no. 1 (January): The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York provides no warranty, express or implied, as to the accuracy, timeliness, completeness, merchantability, or fitness for any particular purpose of any information contained in documents produced and provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in any form or manner whatsoever. 24 Urban Colossus

The 13 American Colonies Name: http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/ushistory/13colonies3.htm Part 1: Coming to America The first colonies in North America were along the eastern coast. Settlers

AP UNITED STATES HISTORY 2008 SCORING GUIDELINES Question 3 Analyze the impact of the market revolution (1815 1860) on the economies of TWO of the following regions. The Northeast The Midwest The South

THE GROWTH OF THE THIRTEEN COLONIES 1607-1760 Motivations for Colonization Jamestown Economic prosperity Single men hoped to make fortunes in Virginia and return to England Previous explorers brought home

Chapter 17: The North After the Civil War The Northern Economy and Industrialization Changes in the North Population Two ways the U.S. changed between 1800 and 1860 = size & population Beginning of industrialization

Chapter 2: Europe Looks Outward Chapter 2.4: France and the Netherlands in North America Section Focus Question What impact did the establishment of French and Dutch colonies in North America have on Native

THE MIDDLE COLONIES New York Settling the Middle [or Restoration ] Colonies Old Netherlanders at New Netherlands 1600s Golden Age of Dutch history. Major commercial and naval power. Challenging England

Jamestown Questions and Answers Why is Jamestown important? Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in North America. It is America s birthplace. Who were the first Europeans to explore Virginia?

Objectives Summarize how Portugal built a trading empire in. Analyze the rise of Dutch and Spanish dominance in the region. Understand how the decline of Mughal India affected European traders in the region.

Colonization and the Revolutionary War Background to the Colonies Before the Revolutionary War, there were thirteen colonies 1 under British rule in North America. People came from all over Europe seeking

THE CHINA TRADE, 1830 TO 1860 In the years following the American Revolution, speed was the most important consideration for any ship even if it came at the expense of cargo space. Sailing ships tended

Chapter 8, Section 2 The Louisiana Purchase Pages 272-277 American Settlers Move West By the early 1800s, thousands of Americans settle in the area between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River. Kentucky,

Chapter 3: European Exploration and Colonization Trade Route to Asia in the 1400s European Trade With Asia Traders - people who get wealth by buying items from a group of people at a low price and selling

Internet Grocery Stores What does the future look like? By: Matthew Rousu In the past several years, there has been an explosion of Internet companies on the retail market. Internet grocery stores exist,

12 Globalization and International Trade Globalization refers to the growing interdependence of countries resulting from the increasing integration of trade, finance, people, and ideas in one global marketplace.

61-61 United States By, the U.S. population had surpassed 179 million, a gain of 19.0 percent from. The median age had decreased to 29.5 (28.7 for men and.3 for women), the first decline since 1900. The

The North vs. South Chapter 19 Notes Similarities Language Religious beliefs and houses of worship Pride for the U.S. Belief in Democracy Geography North 4 seasons- cold winters Many bays- good harbors

MERCANTILISM: TRADE BETWEEN THE AMERICAN COLONIES AND ENGLAND Preview of Main Ideas Leonard W. Ealey III Students participate in an activity about the impact of a mercantilist system on Colonial America

You re One in Seven Billion! We ve all heard the expression, You re one in a million!. With the ever-growing number of people on the planet, it might be more accurate to say, You re one in seven billion!

Western Michigan University ScholarWorks at WMU Best Midwestern High School Writing 2014 Winners Best Midwestern High School Writing: A Celebration and Recognition of Outstanding Prose 5-2014 The Downfall

History and Impact of the Intermodal Shipping Container John Tomlinson Pratt Institute For LIS 654-05/Carrie Bickner September 22, 2009 The intermodal shipping container, a large steel box built in a small

U.S. History Curriculum Map Unit 1: European Settlement of North America Enduring Themes: Conflict and Change Culture Distribution of Power Individuals, Groups and Institutions Location Movement/Migration

1 Edwin C. Breeden Remarks at dedication of Slave Auctions Historic Marker March 10, 2016 ecb3@rice.edu The city of Charleston its past, its present, and undoubtedly its future cannot be fully understood

1 A Brief Analysis of the Impact of NAFTA on the United States and Mexico. Animesh Singh Professor P. Dasgupta Saint Peter s College November 15, 2011. 2 1. Background NAFTA, the North American Free Trade

Venture Capital in the Philadelphia Metro Area* Jennifer Knudson October 2011 Many consider venture capital to be a barometer of innovation and economic growth. It is an important source of capital for

Multifamily Market Commentary July 2014 The Nation s Aging Multifamily Housing Stock Although America s population is rising at its slowest pace in more than 70 years, and it has taken 76 months for employment

British Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Split Over Health of the UK Economy Overall SME importer and exporter confidence sees dip in Q1 Increase in SMEs hurt by sterling volatility Eurozone concerns

1934 36 United States Trends identified in earlier decades, such as the aging and urbanization of the U.S. population, continued into the 19s. In 19, the population exceeded 122 million, a gain of 16.1

CIVIL WAR Document Based Question PART B WRITTEN RESPONSE DIRECTIONS: Write a well organized essay that includes a strong introduction, body (topic and closing sentence for each paragraph), and conclusion

Charles Budney English 138T Friday, April 5, 2013 Texas Wind: The New Oil The earth is slowly, but surely, exhausting its resources. Fossil Fuels like coal and petroleum are undeniably a finite resource.

The Evolution of the Automobile Industry: Innovations of a Few and Subsequent Oligopoly Formation Austin Glan During the early 1900s the automobile industry was rapidly evolving into one of the premier

13 Colonies Reasons why the colonies began God Religious Freedoms The Puritans and the Pilgrims fled from England to the colonies Gold People could make lots of money in the colonies especially on plantations

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN AMERICA BUILDING BACKGROUND In the early 1700s making goods depended on the hard work of humans and animals. It had been that way for hundreds of years. Then new technology

95 th ANNUAL CMSA CONVENTION MAY 2013 Trends in International Moving Terry Head, President International Association of Movers IAM Who are we? The largest international trade association and advocacy group

The Business Cycle and The Great Depression of the 1930 s With the stock market crash in October, 1929, the U.S. entered a period in its history known as the Great Depression. This lasted for almost the

Essential Question: What was the impact of European imperialism in Africa and India? Unit X Quiz 2 1. When did the Suez Canal open? 2. Why was it initially difficult for European powers to control their

12 Is China Catching Up with the US? Kenneth Lieberthal Opinion Kenneth Lieberthal Is China Catching Up with the US? While China has emerged as a key player in global affairs, significant challenges to

01 technical foreign risk and its relevant to acca qualification paper F9 Increasingly, many businesses have dealings in foreign currencies and, unless exchange rates are fixed with respect to one another,

Name: Instructions: Read each question carefully. Read the four answer choices. Mark the best answer. Copyright 2000-2002 Measured Progress, All Rights Reserved : 1. A settlement at Jamestown was started

Chapter 3: The English Colonies Section 1: The Southern Colonies Settlement in Jamestown In 1605 a company of English merchants asked King James I for the right to found, or establish, a settlement. In

SPECIALIZATION AND TRADE IN THE THIRTEEN COLONIES LESSON 6 VISUAL 6.1 GREAT BRITAIN S AMERICAN COLONIES GREAT BRITAIN S COLONIES All colonies are rich in natural resources but short on labor. PRODUCTIVE

The Southern Colonies About 100 men and boys sailed to Virginia in 1607. They set up a settlement. They named their new home Jamestown. They did not plant crops. They looked for gold. Just a few of the

Economic Effects of the Sugar Program Since the 2008 Farm Bill & Policy Implications for the 2013 Farm Bill June 3, 2013 Overview Changes to the sugar program in the 2008 farm bill made a bad program even

CHAPTER 9 A Shirt in the Market This chapter tells us the story of a shirt! It begins with the production of cotton and ends with the sale of the shirt. We shall see that a chain of markets links the producer

TRANSPORTATION SS8G2 highway system, airport, deepwater ports, and railroads 4 TRANPORTATION SYSTEMS IN GEORGIA Georgia s Strength in Transportation Many teachers dig in to the stories of our state s history

So much to explore Constant inspiration to m ake plans... Every ship is a relation-ship. A relationship in which you want to invest! Not just time, not just money. But sense of trust, Experiences. No Limit,

1 Nikki Tarolla Paper Category 2 The Transatlantic Cable was a revolution to technology that was used to unite the continents. Although it took many tries to establish a connection with all the continents,

Thailand s Logistics Over the past fourteen years, overall international trade with Thailand has grown 340% and manufacturing trade 370%; this growth, aided in part by the nation s bilateral trade agreements

Chapter 9: The Policies of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson Department of State, Department of Treasury, Department of War, Attorney General, Postmaster General : 5 government departments established

The wine market: evolution and trends May 2014 1 Table of contents 1. WINE CONSUMPTION 3 2. TRENDS IN WORLD WINE TRADE IN 20 6 3. TOP WINE EXPORTERS IN 20 7 4. TOP WINE IMPORTERS IN 20 9 5. THE FIVE LARGEST

The United States: An Aerospace Nation Remarks of Ambassador Duane E. Woerth AeroMontréal Innovation Forum As prepared for delivery December 2, 2013 After 40 years of piloting aircraft and working on aerospace

Going Nowhere Workers Wages since the Mid-1970s I n the late 1990s, many observers hoped that we had finally broken free of the slow income growth that had bogged down the American middle class for more

EuGENEus Welcome to the Pack Up and Go! game. Find out more about the history of Canadian immigration as you match each push factor (reason for leaving a place) and pull factor (reason for choosing a place)

FUR TRADE PHASE 1 The Early Fur Trade 1500-1603 The cod fishery began the early fur trade. First Nations such as the Mi kmaq began to trade with Europeans coming to fish cod off the east coast. The British

Non Farm Payroll Employment Developments among States during the Great Recession and Jobless Recovery Prepared by: Paul E. Harrington and Neeta P. Fogg Center for Labor Markets and Policy, Drexel University

Social Studies Standard 2 Test Review Native Americans, Explorers, & Colonization 1. How did the Native Americans make it into the Americas? The Native Americans crossed over the Land Bridge (Bering Strait)

SIMPLIFYING LOGISTICS: THE BENEFITS OF RAIL IN A MULTIMODAL SHIPPING SYSTEM A well-designed shipping plan has bottom-line implications for any business. Creating a sound logistics strategy supported by

Global Demographic Trends and their Implications for Employment BACKGROUND RESEARCH PAPER David Lam and Murray Leibbrandt Submitted to the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda This paper

No. 7 Early Settlers Many different groups of people have settled in Nebraska. The very first were Indians who came here more than 10,000 years ago. They were nomadic hunters who were looking for an area

CASE STUDY 2 : WOOL SUPPLY CHAIN 1 Synopsis This is a story about a joint venture arrangement in a wool supply chain, from Australian woolgrower to European weaver. The arrangement operated from 1994 until

Important Historical Events of the Colonial Period 1607 Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America, is established by the London Company in southeast Virginia. Jamestown 1619 1620 The

Estonia and the European Debt Crisis Juhan Parts Estonia has had a quick recovery from the recent recession and its economy is in better shape than before the crisis. It is now much leaner and significantly

August 1995 Volume 1 Number 5 The Health Sector s Role in New York s Regional Economy Ronnie Lowenstein Economic activity in the New York region depends heavily on the health sector a sector that helped

CHINA AND EUROPE, 1500-2000 and BEYOND: What is Modern? Lesson Guide to Web Module Bram Hubbell, the Friends Seminary, Brooklyn, New York. Eight Sections following those of the Web module: I. Introduction

The Future of Energy in Louisiana! March 2014 1! GNO, Inc. Overview! GNO, Inc. is the economic development organization serving the ten parishes of Southeast Louisiana.! Logo! Business Development! Business